Along with:
>The order also blocks the defendants from seizing any photographic, audio and video recording equipment and press passes from people in those two categories, as well as from ordering them to stop recording or observing a protest.
I feel like I'm living in Bizarro World. You have to actually have committed a crime in order to be legitimately arrested? Police can't just take your lawful property? Police can't order citizens to "not observe" what is happening? We needed a restraining order to acknowledge this?
I haven't seen any stories/vids where they arrested journalists without probable cause in the US recently. Would you happen to have any links to share?
I can't believe I've been forced to defend CNN...
I can't believe I'm agreeing with your defense of CNN. We really are living in Bizarro World right now. Some people in the US have gone way too far down the authoritarian path.
While you're at it: https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&ei=G_caX_qVB_HI0PEPv...
Specifically, the statutes that authorize these policing actions are inferior to the constitutional guarantees in this case given the situation on the ground.
When the standard is "know", it actually becomes quite hard to prove a violation. It isn't enough just to demonstrate that the fact is true, you also have to prove that the person who committed the violation subjectively knew it was true.
The text of the order says "reasonably should know". That means even if an individual federal agent didn't know, they can still violate the order if they reasonably should have known. But, what an individual agent reasonably should have known is itself a quite difficult question that can produce a lot of legal argument.
What if a federal agent is told by their superiors that "violent protestors are falsely pretending to be journalists/legal observers to take advantage of this order"? Even if the statement is false, so long as the agent trusts their superiors and genuinely believes it is true, they would fail to meet the "know" standard. (Knowledge is justified true belief, and if you don't believe it, you can't know it.)
Of course, maybe in such a case they "reasonably should have known" that what their superiors said is false. But how are they supposed to know that, and is it reasonable to expect them to know that?
Putting that aside, I think the US government is going to want to appeal. And if it makes it to the Supreme Court, whose side is the conservative majority going to favour?
The reality is Border Patrol agents were purposefully shooting members of the press with rubber bullets and seizing their equipment regardless of their rights.
Just because there's some contrivance where an agent might justify this behavior doesn't mean they or their superiors won't be held in immediate contempt for violating this order. Judges aren't idiots, and this is about as harsh of a warning as they can issue before the case even gets finished.
And if that's seriously the standard they want to hold others to, then I think it's reaonsable to assume a random person in camo without any law enforcement ID on them trying to shove me into a van is a kidnapper and I should be legally protected in using violent force against them to defend myself.
The reason these peaceful crowds are told to disperse, is they are often not peaceful, they leave much damage to regular citizen's and business property behind, and it's not your call whether the crowd poses a danger to my car parked on the street, or my place of work. It's up to the law enforcement assessing risk of the crowd causing damage, and if they think it will, even if they have not, they have to disperse. Like when the crowd starts ignoring the fact that cars drive on the streets trying to get home from work, and starts walking through and blocking traffic. Or even leaving a pile of trash and destroying the lawn of public or private property, which I have to pay to restore with taxes.
Does your peaceful protest stay on the sidewalk? Does it carry its trash to the nearest garbage can instead of dropping it on the street? Does it destroy zero property and wait for the walk sign at intersections? Because if not, the issue is not with the protest. It's with the things you are doing which are not peaceful, to people not part of your peaceful protest.
I was moving apartments during one of these "peaceful" protests in Chicago. At that point, they weren't burning buildings and destroying stores yet. It took me 12 hours to move 2 minivan-loads of stuff. My brother was helping me. When the police tried to get people to clear the roads, the people did not. Instead, they threw a bunch of flamable shit in the parking lot where regular people's cars were, and destroyed those cars. Because the cops tried to clear the road so people, on the last of the month, could move their shit into the new apartment. after working a full day. and having to work the next day. after having 2 hours of sleep.
by the way, when my brother got home, his girlfriend's shitty old car was broken into and needed to be repaired. good thing she was unemployed and couldn't pay for it, otherwise it might have cost $200 instead of the free ducktape + plastic bag combo.
peaceful for you does not mean peaceful for everyone. and the cops, and the feds, are there to make it peaceful for everyone - not just you. when told to disperse, so people like me can simply live our already stressful lives, you refuse to, you are no longer peaceful, and should be thrown into a van and removed. and if that takes tear gas, I'm cool with that, just like you're cool with completely fucking up my life.
let me ask you this: forget protests. regular workday, mid-afternoon. a group of people decide to just start walking in the middle of the road dropping garbage everywhere and won't leave. what do you think should happen to them? nothing? does the group being large make it ok?
Oh, they happened to be wrong? Well, that's for the courts to decide later. Meanwhile, you've already been beaten, arrested, possibly lost your job, missed important events with your family, etc.
The whole idea that people should just comply with LEO commands and let the courts figure out later if the LEO were wrong completely misses the fact that the consequences for the LEO being wrong in their issued commands are trivial compared to the consequences for most people in complying with those commands.
if you are blocking every road in the middle of the day, that is illegal. we have sidewalks for you. it's not "any order" - you're breaking the law, and are warned not to.
as far as police being wrong with a suspect - that is not for the courts to decide. that is decided immediately. and the procedure for that, is when they think you may be an armed suspect, for you to follow the order to get into a position safe for them, so they can verify your identity. not to keep standing there talking and refusing to lay down and put your hands on your head. because if they do have the correct suspect, he can take out his gun and kill them. if you don't comply, absolutely they force you to, and you are charged with not complying.
and if you look at all of those cases you're raging about, no - the suspects did not comply like they have to by law. yes, there are a dozen cops over the last decade that literally murdered someone, in the whole country. there are 12000 cops in my city alone.
There is no “except large groups” exemption in the First Amendment.
Free speech does not allow you to break other laws. Your freedom stops when it destroys the freedom of your fellow man.
FYI, people don't twit in twitter. In real language, we speak in sentences, not a single sentence, to communicate an idea. The narrative doesn't end with the first period.
This is the US, not China. People have the right to protest in large crowds. Some wannabe fascist telling you to go away does not make a protest non-peaceful.
But the vast majority of protests were entirely peaceful. And and even greater number of individual protesters have done nothing wrong.
The police doesn’t get to shoot you in the head because you look like the people they saw on the news doing something wrong half-way across the country.
And even actual criminals aren’t fair game to police violence. This isn’t some gang war between equals. The police is expected to be better than that sort of revengeful sadism.
“[The mayor] put on a pair of goggles someone handed him and drank water but did not leave his spot at the front of the protest and continued to take tear gas as the demonstration raged — with protesters lighting a large fire between protective fencing and the Mark O. Hatfield Federal Courthouse amid the pop-pop-pop sounds of the federal agents deploying tear gas and stun grenades into the crowd.”
The federal officers are officially assigned to protect that courthouse. They built a fence but people still managed to build a large fire on the wrong side of the fence. It looks like the officers have a good reason to want the crowd to disperse, although I’m not sure that it’s a great idea to use tear gas so close to a fire. Unfortunately, as I understand it, if the crowd refuses to leave and tear gas has been ruled out, the remaining options are all very violent.
by the way, peaceful to you is not peaceful to me. when I'm driving home from work and literally every road is filled with people on the road, and I am unable to get home till midnight - you are not peaceful, and you are breaking the law. when you refuse to clear the road and let me come home so I can sleep before the next day at work starts, I'm glad to pay for the tear gas and the rubber bullet that hits you in the head. you clearly don't care about my well-being, so I not only don't care about yours - I want physical harm to come to you.
this is why assemblies outside get a permit, and a designated route to follow. so the majority of people, who are not a part of your rage party, can get routed around and live their lives. you choose not to follow the social contract with the rest of society - I see zero issue with police not following the social contract with you. you have escalated the situation, so expect an escalation from the people you're "peacefully" harming - the majority of people.
Has this right been repealed in the US? Is this not currently the case? If so, are there court decisions that have temporarily repealed these rights? Am I misunderstanding something?
The cynical part of my mind tells me that nothing has changed apart from the police brazenly ignoring the law, but I'd like to understand if I'm missing something in this regard.
[0] https://lawandcrime.com/legal-analysis/two-dhs-officials-app...
Is that not the case already?